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Changing Bills with Bill Payments in ACCOUNTS

I realized in the course of a support issue recently that ACCOUNTS allows you to modify bill transactions (entered with “Enter Bills”) for which you already have bill payments (entered with “Pay Bills”) recorded.

While I think it makes perfect sense to be able to correct the splits on such a bill, changing the amount seems rather more questionable, since it will then presumably no longer match the amount of the bill payment (assuming it was a payment of the entire bill, not a partial payment).

So I’m wondering which change should be made to this ability to edit bills with bill payments on them:

Don’t allow the total amount of the bill to be changed. (In that case, to change it, you would first have to delete the bill payment, make the change, then re-enter the bill payment.)

Allow the total amount to be changed, but warn the user before saving the change that “There is already a bill payment on this bill in the amount of $xxx.xx. Do you really want to change the amount of this bill?”, or words to that effect.

Same as #2, but also warn them about this as they are entering the window for editing that bill.

What do you think? I think Kwame and I are leaning towards #3, but are definitely open to other views. Thanks.

If you don’t select option 1 you will probably create more problems for unsophisticated users however sophisticated users will be annoyed if they can’t select option 3. Option 3 is probably the better choice but there is certainly a down side